World War Z (2013)
- To accurately portray their role in World War Z, Brad Pitt spent weeks conducting hands-on research and rehearsing directly with director Marc Forster.
- Despite initial studio skepticism, World War Z went on to gross over $540,000,000 worldwide.
World War Z is a 2013 American apocalyptic action horror film directed by Marc Forster and starring Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator who is called back into service when a devastating zombie pandemic threatens to destroy human civilization within weeks. Unlike traditional slow-moving zombies, the infected in World War Z transform within seconds and move in terrifying, ant-like swarms that can overwhelm entire cities in minutes. Lane travels the globe โ from South Korea to Israel to a World Health Organization facility in Wales โ searching for the origin of the outbreak and a potential way to combat it.
World War Z had one of the most troubled productions in recent Hollywood history, with the entire third act being scrapped and rewritten after test screenings of the original $125 million climax, set during a massive zombie battle in Russia, proved unsatisfying. Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard were brought in to craft a new, more intimate conclusion set in a WHO research facility, requiring $20 million in additional shooting. The resulting film bore little resemblance to Max Brooks's 2006 novel beyond the title and the global scope of the outbreak.
Despite the production difficulties, World War Z earned $540 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing zombie film in history. The Israel sequence, in which swarms of zombies pile atop each other to scale Jerusalem's massive walls, created one of the most memorable and viscerally terrifying images in zombie cinema. Brad Pitt's understated, determined performance grounded the film's large-scale spectacle in human emotion.
